Introduction

For my research I am comparing the songs of Simon and Garfunkel with the songs of their solo careers. Simon and Garfunkel were making beautiful songs with their own style. I want to see if it is possible for other artists to recreate that style with their own songs. And I find it interesting to see if Simon and Garfunkel continued with that style in their solo careers or that they chose another style.

At first I would like to research the most popular songs from Simon and Garfunkel. What is that thing that makes the songs more popular than least popular songs? And I would like to know if their solo careers were as popular as when they were a duo and what elements of their styles are the same. Which elements stayed the same and which elements are where did they put their own style in the songs?

A typical song from Simon and Garfunkel is “The sound of Silence”. In this song the message is very clear and the sound is very Simon and Garfunkel, calm with multiple voices. An atypical song is “Cloudy”. This is an atypical song not because of the sound, but because of the lyrics. There is not a big message or beautiful words, there is repetition in the text and there are unanswered questions.

Ggplot

In the ggplot SaGeAG I compared the songs of Simon and Garfunkel with the songs from Art Garfunkel. You can see that most of the dots are in the same area. This means that the songs of Art Garfunkel have approximately the same energy and speechiness. However, you can also see that Simon and Garfunkel had some songs with more energy or more speechiness and Art Garfunkel stayed approximately in the same area. The interesting thing thing about the plot SaGePS is that one dot that has far more speechiness than the other songs. I would like to investigate which song that is. When you look at the rest of the plot, you can see that the songs from both artists are in the same area if you look at energy and speechiness.

Chromagram

In this Chromagram, you can see the different chords in this song of Simon and Garfunkel. The chord that is most used in this song is E. listening at the song, you can hear a minor key. On the moments you don’t hear E, there is a mix of B and D, also in a minor key.

Dynamic time warping

Two versions of Sound of Silence in one plot. You can see the clear diagonal line in the middle. This means that the two versions are similar at those moments of the song. The rest of the plot is filled with similar squares. This shows the similarities in the rest of the song.

Self-Similarity Matrices

In the first graph you can see that they mostly used c03 and c02. However, c01 played evenly throughout the song.

The second graph represents the timbre of the song and the third graph the chroma. You can see a clear structure in timbre. The dark blue squares are repetitions and the light blue squares are also timbres which are largely the same. There are a few yellow lines, that is the only moment in the song that that specific timbre is.

The graph of the pitches is less clear. The boundaries of the different blocks are less visible. However, there is a lot of dark blue, which means that throughout the song there not much difference in pitches. There are a few yellow spots, those are little moments where they used a different pitch.

In both timbre and chroma there is a dark diagonal line. This means that those parts are exactly the same on that moment. This is true because at that moment, the graph compared two of the same music at the same time, so those bits are dark blue, because the timbre and pitches are the same.

Chordogram

In this chordogram, you can see the chords that are used in this song. In the first 100 seconds there are no dark blue spots. At this point in the song the piano plays very little. But mostly on D#min and Ebmaj. At 100 seconds there is a little break in the music and after this moment they continue playing on the same chords, but more convincingly. The blue spots are darker on the Ebmaj and Cmin chords. Right before the 200 seconds, there is again a small break. After 200 seconds, all the colors are darker then before. This means that it is less clear which chord is played, but the Cmin chord is still the darkest, so the changes that that chord is played are the biggest. The last yellow/green line is the end of the song where the chords are fading away.

Hisogram of keys

In the three histograms you can see the different keys of the songs by Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon and Simon and Garfunkel. There is quite a difference between the different artists, but every artist also has big differences. Remarkable is that both Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel have a key that does not contain a song. However, those keys were quite popular in the songs of Simon and Garfunkel, but still not the most popular key. Key 11 is clearly the most popular key in the songs of Simon and Garfunkel, but Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel didn’t use that key very much.

Tempogram

The tempo of this song is 93 bpm. The first tempogram is chaotic, but the clearest line is at 190 bpm, nothing like 93 bpm. The second tempogram is more likely to be right, but is still is a little bit unclear. The clearest line is at 90 bpm. I am not sure what the little yellow lines mean, because in the song there is no change in tempo.

Hisogram of tempi

In the three histograms you can see different tempi of the songs by Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon and Simon and Garfunkel. There is quite a difference between the different artists, but every artist also has big differences. Paul Simon has less different kind of tempi. He stays between 75 and 175 bpm. In the plots of Art Garfunkel and Simon and Garfunkel, you can see outliers at 200 bpm, this is maybe a little bit fast. Remarkable is that Art Garfunkel and Simon and Garfunkel chose a very slow tempo for some of their music that Paul Simon did not choose.

Dendrogram

In this dendrogram, you can see the different clusters made in the songs I used in this portfolio. You can see that valence and energy are most similar and the songs CLoudy and scarborough Fair are most similar to each other. The blocks with different colors represent the amaount that a variable is measured in a song. So, liveness has a strong presence in The Sound of Silence and there is no danceability in Bridge over Troubled Water.

Conclusion

There are a lot of differences in the songs of Simon and Garfunkel, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. In the histograms of tempi and the histograms of keys, you can see some differences clearly. Paul Simon is less extensive with different types of tempi then Simon and Garfunkel and Art Garfunkel. The keys of the songs are very different in the repertoire of all three artists.

In the Dynamic time warping plot of Sound of Silence, you can see that different versions of the song are quite similar to each other. In the tempogram of Cloudy you can see a nice and steady tempo.